the one date wonder.

July 28, 2015

I can’t be the only one who’s experienced this. It is what I oh so affectionately like to refer to as the one-date-wonder. You meet a dude, you go out on a great first date, and then you’re a freak if you ever want to see him again. Like… what? For all of us still out in the undeniably more f***ed up by the day millennial dating world, this is an extremely common occurence.

So it begs the question. Am I a freak?

Now when I was younger, and a guy stopped talking to me out of the blue, I obsessed over it. Now it’s become such a normal thing that I can literally brush it off my shoulder. When I was younger, it was my fault he was never texting me, my fault he dropped off the face of the earth. Now it’s more like, “Well that dummy missed out. I’m effing awesome.” This, ladies, is the attitude all of us need to have when it comes to dating. The second you start questioning yourself and what you want is the second you let him win the dating game.

So no, I am not a freak. He is simply a loser.

When things like this happen though, it often gets me thinking about our generation. We’re so attached to the idea of finding love, but when actual feelings come into play, our first instinct is always, always, always to run.We’re all on these dating sites (and yeah, Tinder is a dating site whether you care to admit it or not), and the most we expect to come from them is a hook up. Never anything serious.

And what is it that has made us this way? So unattached to our emotions? To other people? Maybe it’s because society has made showing any other feeling than happiness in a real-world setting impossible. Maybe it’s the fact that a lot of millennial’s parents are divorced. Maybe it’s because a lot of us grew up thinking it was easy to find love and someone who gets you.

I feel more comfortable arguing the first of those three “maybe’s”. We’re wired to believe that feeling any emotion besides happiness is bad. Anger, hatred, jealousy, betrayal, sadness, heartbreak–all of the emotions so avoided and frowned down upon by our society are romanticized in our favorite TV shows, movies, and books. Feeling any of these things in real-life though? It’s not okay unless something serious warrants it, and in today’s society, heartbreak and divorce is so common that being crushed by a great love doesn’t seem worthy of heartache. It’s just another “it’s complicated” on Facebook. And that’s really shitty because all of these emotions that coincide with relationships are 110% warranted. But nobody wants to be the heartbroken one or the jealous one or the angry one because we’re all so damn scared of showing the side of us that’s not always perfectly and happily curated for social media.

And maybe that’s the key to the one-date-wonder. Go out for a night of fun, get those butterflies, start thinking that maybe this is the one that’ll be different, give yourself a good confidence boost because you know at least someone likes you–and then let that night be. Let it sit right beside all the happy memories you keep on the shelf at the forefront of your mind, so that you don’t have to think of the sadness that might have come had you actually tried to really get to know the person. Had they rejected you. Had you fallen hard for them and three years down the line, they broke you. It’s easier to avoid the risk of actually feeling something than to take the chance. One-date-wonder he may be, though he could have had a point. But if we’re constantly saving ourselves the heartache that’s sure to come down the line, how do we ever find the happily ever after that every corny rom-com guaranteed us? Here’s the answer: we don’t.

1 Comment

I completely agree with you on this. I’ve gone on and off dating sites/apps several times in the past couple of years (the experiences I’ve had always ended very badly). Our generation seems to have this new mentality towards dating that’s just so awful. I’ve tried to pinpoint what exactly has changed or the reason behind what you refer to as “the one date wonder” but I really can’t figure it out. As you mention, there’s a multitude of reasons. Dating today is so frustrating!